The only thing missing was John Madden and a Telestrator

Last Wednesday night we had a skateboard demonstration during announcements. A skateboarder jumped over a very trusting volunteer down on ground floor. But before the service started, our pastor asked if we could do an instant replay right after the stunt. A spinning hourglass appeared over my head for about 3 seconds (I'm running at 3.2ghz overclocked)... Yes, yes we can... and, we can slow-mo it. We iso'ed camera 2 (handheld) that was shooting from the stage down on the action. The deck we used to ISO was a Panasonic AJ-SD930 (deck A) which has a jog shuttle on it. Deck A was routed to our Playback 1 channel on the switcher. 5 seconds after the jump, our pastor (Pastor Bob) said, "For those of you that might have missed that, I think we have an instant replay." As soon as the guy made the jump, I stopped it, jogged it back, then rocked the shuttle forward to play it at about 1/2 speed. After the slow-mo jump, I back it up and played even slower at about 1/4 speed. Beautiful. No digital breakup, no tears. Question: has any church, anywhere, done an instant replay, and on top of that a slow-motion replay? Maybe another first for Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale!

Found in Translation

Our Spanish translation room is finally completed! Here's the scoop: over 100 William Sound receivers are picked up every Sunday by our Spanish-only attendees, and we are getting ready to order over 200 more receivers to divide between Spanish and our upcoming Portuguese listeners. Our translator, Steve Lingo (perfect name huh?), uses a Studio Projects C1 large diaphragm condenser microphone suspended by an O.C. White boom. This is processed and given phantom power by a Behringer ULTRAVOICE DIGITAL VX2496, providing mic pre, compression, EQ, and expander (it also has a de-esser and tube emulation, but we don't use them). From the VX2496 the signal moves to a Soundcraft Spirit M4 mixer. The Spanish translation leaves the M4 mixer via post fader aux send straight to the Williams Sound transmitter down in the sanctuary. This feed also goes to an AES converter on channel 3 of our SD-SDI alternate venue feed to be sent to the Plantation and Boca Raton campuses via 200mbs fiber so that translation is heard there as well... but that's another huge post! Steve's M4 mixer also has a stereo feed of the house mix/audience mics which is recorded to DVD (that, believe it or not, sounds fantastic thanks to Michael Grosso, our FOH engineer). After praise and worship is over, Steve brings down the house mix, brings up his channel along with a stereo channel containing our stereo house audience mics. SO, during the sermon, you hear a Spanish translation with the aural sense of the live room. When the audience laughs or applauds, you hear it crystal clear on the Spanish DVD or CD (HHB Burn-IT) in full stereo glory. The HHB gets it's audio from the M4's optical/digital output, how cool is that? Our translator also has his own mixer... a Behringer Eurorack UB1202. With access to all signals, he can adjust it to his heart's content. He puts his own voice in the left ear hard-L, and the speaker's voice in his right ear hard-R. He has two JVC 9" color monitors. One shows what the DVD recorder is recording (program broadcast line cut), the other "confidence" monitor shows the IMAG feed which shows the teacher 98% of the time. About 15 minutes after the service ends, you can purchase a Spanish translated sermon on DVD or CD in full stereo. Both translation rooms are sealed and we are installing the acoustic wedge foam (75% coverage) this week (www.soundsuckers.com). I'm sorry if this doesn't quite describe the setup, please ask questions.

PS: This room will double as a voice-over room for quick VOs when the recording studio is busy. The Studio Projects line of microphones is probably the best value on the market. The C1 isn't quite a U87, but at $200 it sounds like a $1200 mic easily.

A Biblical Canon

Most churches above 1000 people are looking to add IMAG to there service so that computer graphics, lyrics, and the pastor's facial expressions can be seen. The rub: a 4 camera capable video system with traditional triax cameras can run in excess of $300,000 at the low end, and over $1 million for HD. Cameras, triax systems, lenses (the silent killer), tripods, switcher, engineering... it all adds up very quickly. As for the title of this post, we recently demo-ed the Canon XLH1 camcorder. HD/SD SDI out with genlock makes this gem multi-camera ready. We ran it through it's paces and were absolutely shock at it's quality. For churches looking for an "Alternate Venue" HD static camera, and can't afford an Ikegami, this is it. 1080i works best for Alternate Venue cameras because most Alt. Ven. have congregates seated within 20 feet of the screen. You can't simply move people back 50ft. so that 720P looks good... to maximize seating you need to seat people closer. at 1080i, you get more resolution. 720P might have more temporal resolution with 60 frames a second, but we aren't doing slow-mo here folks. Anyway, a church can get 3 XLH1 cameras, tripods, a For.A HVS-500HS HD switcher, some other misc. gear and have a HDSDI production for about $70,000 (HDV master). The cameras come with a 20x lens that looks pretty good. Yeah there are some shortcomings like no CCUs. They have a software based control system that can shade the cameras and iris, but it works through firewire and you need a separate computer for each camera. The viewfinder stinks too, BUT to start out a video system or upgrade from using security cameras with robotics running through a Videonics or MX-30 switcher, this would blow you away. AND!!! you can use the camera as a camcorder for ENG or EFP film-style production. The XLH1 truly accels as a cinematic, film-like production camera. Well, check it out for yourself. You can request a demo DVD from Canon or your local Canon dealer.

As a side note, JVC just annouced a new HD camcorder that will have similar features, but adds a removable lens, and CCU capability. Keep an eye out for that one!

Like a teacher on Christmas day... No class

I love that line. It's from a Fat Albert episode. I forget who said it, might have been the kid in the beret? It's funnier when you hear me try to imitate his voice when I say it. Anyway, it reminds me of what a great youth leader of my teen years used to say. "Be classy people. Do the right thing at the right time." It's something that's been on my mind lately. Wow what a short post, but hopefully it says a lot to everyone.